


After 01x12 (The First David Job) [actually about halfway through the Second David]

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [12]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:43:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6524389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sophie fails to/refuses to apologize for the events of the First David Job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After 01x12 (The First David Job) [actually about halfway through the Second David]

It was about two in the morning when Sophie, wrapped in a silk robe (where did she even _get_ that?) wandered over to Alec’s impromptu workstation. They were at the house Alec… _appropriated_ from a bank foreclosures database, the one that used to be MC Hammer’s. It’s enormous, but it’s only been a few months, and he’s only gotten about three rooms outfitted for human habitation. Eliot and Parker both vanished into the bowels of the mansion shortly after the work talk ended (Eliot was still pissed at Sophie, and Parker was obviously freaking out about the tension between the team, so Alec understood why they had gone – more than any of the others, those two needed their space), and Nate was in one of the rooms with a bed, presumably sleeping. Sophie should have been in the other – Alec volunteered to take the couch like a gentleman – but it seemed she was no more able to sleep than he.

“What are you working on?” she asked hesitantly.

“Nothin’.” He was just going over everything they already know, hoping that he would see some kind of solution he didn’t before. But nothing’s changed. He just couldn’t sleep, and it didn’t seem right to try to play Warcraft or some other game with this job hanging over them all unresolved.

“Oh, come on, Hardison… Alec… Don’t be like that.”

Alec stiffened when he heard her say his first name – she hardly ever has, and _never_ in that voice. That was her _con_ voice, the bitch. “Unless this is an apology, I don’t wanna hear it,” he snapped.

“Well, I’m afraid we’re at an impasse, then,” she snapped back, if you could call that particular tone snappish. ( _Sniped_ back, maybe?) “Because it’s not an apology.”

Alec harrumphed and tried to tune out her voice, staring at the layout of the museum on his screens, but there was a certain penetrating quality to it that made ignoring her impossible, even though he didn’t want to hear anything she had to say.

“I don’t have anything to apologize _for_. It wasn’t _my_ fault the job went south! How would it have changed anything if you knew I had the Second David all along? How?”

“You tried to use us!”

“You all agreed! It was a good plan! And it wasn’t about me, it was about Nate’s revenge.”

“You tryin’a tell me you weren’t after the glory of havin’ _both_ Davids?”

“We’re thieves, Alec! We steal things. It’s what we do. And I don’t think –”

Alec cut her off, suddenly furious. “We don’t steal _from each other_. You don’t use your team without tellin’ ‘em what _exactly_ is goin’ on an’ what the stakes are!”

“Which part of this are you angry about?” she asked, after making a clear effort to calm herself. “The plan to sell Blackpoole a fake David, which you all agreed to and we worked on _together_? The part where Nate’s ex-wife showed up out of the blue, and you and Parker had to steal the First David? Because I certainly didn’t plan that! Or the part where I suggested taking advantage of that unexpected situation by _running the original plan_ and selling him a _second_ fake? Which, I might add, would be identical to the first fake. It was _Nate’s_ idea to sell him the real one and pull the switch after the sale. We _all_ overreached.”

Alec had to think about that for a second, because those were all good points.

“How about the part where you didn’t tell us you had _James fucking Sterling_ on your ass over stealing the second one?”

Yeah, that was the part that really pissed him off. It might not have made a difference going in, if they had known. Nate might still have insisted that he was better than Sterling, and they might have made a run at it. But they could have been better prepared. They could have had backup plans if it all went south (which it did). He could have saved the offices, damn it, and had a new base of operations set up halfway across the country!

“I didn’t know he was on my trail any more than you did!” she defended herself, though she had the good grace to look embarrassed. “He never got close enough that I found out who was investigating that one. And it was ten years ago. By all rights, he should have given up the investigation when the company paid out.”

Un. Freaking. Believable. And yet… it made sense. It really did. A grifter like Sophie would be unable to check up on whether there was anyone on her trail unless they actually got close enough to meet, like she and Nate had done on countless occasions. If Sterling had just talked to the people she conned at the Vatican, he could easily have gotten enough of a description to link it to her other crimes, all without her ever realizing he was closing in.

 _Fuck!_ He didn’t want to forgive her yet. He wanted someone to blame for these last three lonely months without so much as a phone call from the rest of them. Nate, at least, he had known was okay – he wasn’t truly a wanted man, like the rest of them, so he hadn’t had to vanish – but Parker and Eliot? It was like they had never existed. (Sophie, he hadn’t tried to track.) It hurt. He thought they were more than teammates. _Friends_. Almost family. But they all just walked away without a word.

Damn her and her logical arguments!

Fine. He might have forgiven her, but he wasn’t ready to admit it, yet.

He looked up at the woman, who was still waiting for him to answer her, standing with her arms crossed, looking somewhere between defensive and vulnerable. If she was playing him, he had to admit, it was working.

“Just… just go away, Sophie,” he muttered. The grifter, knowing when to push her mark and when to let him relax, gave him a look that he couldn’t interpret and nodded once before she did so.


End file.
